RADISSON, Sask. (Staff) – Like hundreds of other elevator managers, Don Harris faced a tough choice when the Grain Services Union called a strike Sept. 7 against Saskatchewan Wheat Pool.
He decided to keep his elevator open, not because of any great desire to support company management, but because the needs of his customers and his community came first.
“If I lose four or five key customers, we could lose this elevator,” Harris said in an interview. That would be a blow to this community of 450 where Harris and his family live, and to area farmers.
Read Also
Saskatchewan puts crown land auction on hold
Auctions of Saskatchewan crown lease land are once again on hold.
He said many farmers would have been shocked to see him on strike because they hadn’t realized pool elevator managers are union members. During the busy spring and summer seasons, many elevator managers work seven days a week, up to 16 hours a day: “There’s not many companies have dedicated staff that will work 16 hours and get paid for eight.”
Albert Nutting, a retired farmer whose Radisson-area land is rented out, also declined to choose sides between the company and union, suggesting both could be wrong.
The GSU strike was bad news for a provincial economy that was already in trouble, Nutting said while visiting the Radisson elevator: “Saskatchewan is a poor enough bloody outfit anyway without having anything disrupt it.”
At the pool’s Battleford elevator, manager Roger Simon said many farmers believe there should have been some way to avoid the strike: “I don’t know if delegates realize and management realizes and even the union realizes how much it’s hurting.”
Like his Radisson colleague, Simon decided to keep working so that customers would not be permanently lost: “Without the customer, as far as I’m concerned, we have nothing.”
